Yesterday... and Tomorrow

Years ago – back in the early to mid 90’s – a movie called “Groundhog Day" came out, with Bill Murray.   It’s about a news reporter sent out to cover the events in/around Punxsutawney, PA – where Punxsutawney Phil is supposed to live.   This is the groundhog that tells whether there will be 6 more weeks of winter or not. 

So this reporter goes out and is there for the events.  I don’t remember this particular character as a very happy fellow.   He’s a little jade from working the same job for many years – not quite reached “bitter” yet, but his job seems to have definitely lost its freshness.   

He wakes up on Groundhog Day, gets ready, eats breakfast at the local diner, and does what he’s there to do.   He goes where he needs to go, and interviews the people he needs to interview.   He does all this technically very well.   He does his job.   But it is not lost on the viewer that there’s no Spirit in what he’s doing.   And when the day is over, it’s almost as if he’s glad.   He’s glad he can get out of Punxsutawney and get back to the real world, to his world, the world he feels most comfortable in.   Tomorrow, he’ll go back home!  

And when tomorrow comes, he wakes up and… it’s Groundhog Day... again!   It’s the same day all over again!    I saw this movie, and thought… okay, it’s a movie, entertaining, interesting idea.  But at the end of the day… it’s still just an entertaining Hollywood movie    No big deal.   But as the years have gone on, I’d begun to see some incredible gems in the movie.     Yes, the character relives the same day over and over again.   But the hidden gems are in how the main character reacts to what he’s going through.

So he lives through the incredible surprise of waking up to the same day as yesterday… again… only to have it happen again, and again, and again.   At first he seems more stunned than anything.   This is a mystery!   “This is very strange”, thinks he!   How is this happening?    Before he gets to the question, “Why is this happening?”, he first goes through anger.   He knows what’s going to happen, generally speaking.  If he follows the original schedule, he knows who he’ll see, and when he’ll see them.   It gets to the point where he even knows what people will say before they say it... because he's heard it all before!!!  And all this gets annoying!   

People initially respond predictably, since the day starts out the same way.  But as the movie goes on, he realizes that his responses and reactions have an impact on follow-on interactions… he can change the script!   So he plays around with this for a while.  But ultimately even that gets old!   It’s still a drag – it’s literally the same day over again… again!

But he begins to understand his reactions to elements and people can change the tone of his day.   Ultimately he gets to the place of recognizing and believing that he has another chance every day to learn something new, to grow.   He has another chance to make the day better.    He begins to see this as a gift rather than a curse.

His reactions with people begin to change, he’s more uplifting, more positive.   And as he changes, the people around him respond differently as well.    He “gets” it… he goes to bed and he wakes up… and even though it might be literally the same day (as in date on the calendar), it is really NOT the same day at all.   It’s different.   What he did “yesterday” gets wiped clean… he can start again fresh!    I saw the movie as very positive!    No matter how today turns out… tomorrow is a new day!   Tomorrow gives us a chance to work on what we need to work on, to see things differently.

Not long after we started the home church group, we gathered together but didn’t have much of an idea where we all were in terms of what we believed and why.   So one of the first things we talked about was what we believed… about life, God, dreams, etc.    One of the things I remember saying was that I believed in Tomorrow – I said I believed that “tomorrow is a new day!”    Yesterday is over.   It is what it is.   But when you wake up tomorrow… well that’s a new day!    Tomorrow… tomorrow… that’s where hope and possibility and new chances, and new visions dwell.  

Okay, some stuff from yesterday does comes with you to tomorrow – you know, the effects of what has happened yesterday can blur into tomorrow as well, for sure.   But “yesterday” doesn’t have predict what “tomorrow” will be like!       Past is not always Destiny!       

    

I recently started volunteering with the Community of St. Dysmas.    St. Dysmas is a prison ministry in our synod, but because of budgetary constraints, they are involving many more pastoral volunteers than before.    They needed a pastor over at one of the prisons in Hagerstown – one of the ones I used to visit on a regular basis almost 10 years ago.   I saw an inmate again, one I hadn’t seen since I left back almost a decade ago.   

He’s a very different guy than I’d remembered him to be.   He did a very horrible thing that got him in prison.   And I met him for the first time not long after he’d arrived.    He was very sullen, withdrawn.   Depressed for sure.     Not sure how much of this had to do with remorse over what he’d done, but he was certainly –in my opinion -- in danger of suicide. 

I saw him again a few months back when I went back in for the first time in almost a decade, and he’s a very different guy.   His faith in God seems very strong.   Now, the effects of what he’d done are not gone for sure.   The effects on his family are still there for sure.   But for him, he's seems to show that with God “yesterday” doesn’t have to predict what his “tomorrow” will be like.    He’s learning that with God his past doesn’t have to be his destiny.

Tomorrow is to some degree what we make it.   Tomorrow is to some degree how we perceive it.   We’re in the season of Christmas still, when we celebrate the birth of Jesus.  Do we know when Jesus was born?    No…  but for a variety of reason, we celebrate it on December 25^th.    In the northern hemisphere this is just after the longest night of the year, which turned around, is also the shortest day of the year.   This comes after the day that has the shortest amount of light in it.    But now we have more and more Light coming into the world!   More Light every day!   Tomorrow there will be more Light than today!  The darkness of yesterday is giving way to the very real light of tomorrow!

With God’s help – with God’s grace, and forgiveness and blessing… we can let go of yesterday – and all the negative stuff that comes with it – and move more fully  into a New Tomorrow!